Requirements to view Bluray?

[zCypher]

Howdy y'all,

Setting up my old E5200 rig as a hand me down for the mum, will mostly be used for media. Will be hooked up directly to a 59" Samsung plasma for some viewing goodness. Obviously the plasma will not be used as a monitor, just as a secondary display for viewing fullscreen content.

Thing has miserable onboard video, so I'm trying to find a good cheapo card to stick in there that can send an HDMI signal to the TV. I saw a bunch of AMD 5450 cards on NCIX for $30-40 which seems reasonable (for various 512 - 1024MB models). They say "64-bit" though, not sure if this is a concern for this type of usage.

Is the E5200 sufficient for bluray? Will a 5450 be ok? I'd use the onboard video if it could handle it, but it doesn't have any HDMI ports so that's out.

I'd give my current GTX 460 to that system, but I haven't found a sweet enough deal on new card(s) to force me to upgrade.

Your thoughts?

 

[Termie]

The 5450 should be fine for blu-ray:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5450,2549-4.html

Using the e5200 as the CPU won't be a problem.

 

[Fallengod]

Ya I think you should be fine. Even a super low end video card should do blu-ray viewing.

The one thing id check is to make sure the hdmi output can decode blu-ray audio as well. Some super cheap video cards do not output audio through hdmi, however most do.

Anyways, not sure where youre located, but I recently bought a $30 after rebate low profile GT 430 which is way more than is needed. That would handle any blu-ray etc stuff.

A 5450 is pretty slow but, id think that would probably be fine. You should be able to find video cards like that in the $15AR category.

 

[zCypher]

Ya I think you should be fine. Even a super low end video card should do blu-ray viewing.

The one thing id check is to make sure the hdmi output can decode blu-ray audio as well. Some super cheap video cards do not output audio through hdmi, however most do.

Anyways, not sure where youre located, but I recently bought a $30 after rebate low profile GT 430 which is way more than is needed. That would handle any blu-ray etc stuff.

A 5450 is pretty slow but, id think that would probably be fine. You should be able to find video cards like that in the $15AR category.

Thanks for the quick input. I figured as much, but really wasn't sure. I have never delved into the Bluray world. You never know these days. My x120e can play any 1080p content just fine, but try and play HD Netflix.. LOL.

Anyway, how can I tell if any given card can output bluray audio through HDMI?

 

[nickb64]

Anyway, how can I tell if any given card can output bluray audio through HDMI?

I'm pretty sure all HD 5000 series and newer and NVIDIA 400 series and newer should be able to do that.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-gpus-shootout

 

[superjim]

AMD's 880G chipset has built-in 4250 graphics and is overkill for blu-ray (and decoding of anything I've thrown at it) so a 5450 is just gravy.

My Panasonic HDC-TM700 camcorder records 1080p/60fps to an .m2ts file. I can play these raw files with my HTPC (see sig) with no problems (K-lite codec pack).

 

[Deleted member 4644]

Actually, the 6450 is better for HTPC use. And in fact the 6570 is even better.

That is assuming you want to use some live video features, such as de-noise.

There is an article here on anandtech where they actually fault the 6450 as slightly underpowered. This was news to me as well.

 

[Termie]

Actually, the 6450 is better for HTPC use. And in fact the 6570 is even better.

That is assuming you want to use some live video features, such as de-noise.

There is an article here on anandtech where they actually fault the 6450 as slightly underpowered. This was news to me as well.

Anandtech has done an entire series of reviews on the AMD HTPC cards, and found that the HD5570 was the minimum you need for perfect HTPC functionality.

HD5450: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2931/4
HD5570 part 1: http://www.anandtech.com/show/2935/3
HD5570 part 2: http://www.anandtech.com/show/3601/the-final-word-on-the-best-radeon-htpc-card

And finally the newer HD6450, which Anandtech said is probably the perfect HTPC card: http://www.anandtech.com/show/4263/amds-radeon-hd-6450-uvd3-meets-htpc/3

Tom's also found the 6450 to have fantastic video processing capabilitites, but it's original price was too high: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6450-caicos-blu-ray-3d,2920-13.html

The final call is up to the OP - I think the HD5450 would be fine for any mother's video watching needs, but the 6450 might be just a bit better. I'd say avoid spending more than $50US on a card for these purposes - if you can get a 6450, 5550, 5570, or 5670 for almost the same price as a 5450, then those are the better buys. Otherwise, it seems you found a very good price for the 5450 and should probably go with that. The memory bandwidth (you mentioned 64-bit) shouldn't make a difference for video playback.

 

[Hubb1e]

I don't think mum will care much about vector adaptive deinterlacing that the 6450 can handle as long as you get the GDDR5 version.

The 5450 will do just fine. Avoid the cards with 32 bit memory though. I believe they are only on the 6450 but just make sure you get one with 64 bit memory.

 

[Binky]

The 5450 makes a pretty good htpc card. I've used the 3450, 4350, and the 5450 for blu-ray without issues. Higher models might show a slightly better picture but you'd probably never notice the difference.